P.S.A. Service To Writers: Clam Bake '08

THERE NOW, my brothers and sisters. My kingdom for some calamine lotion. Those skeeters sure can bite. Today the writer returns to his natural habitat - the warren like office with the Herman Miller chair. Oh how the forest creatures will dance and the mosquitos weep for the loss of so tasty a price.

They can suck it.

If you notice the results of the poll at left, you may note that "Did I say that out loud?" won handily in our poll of the worst clams in movies and tv, with a dominant 40% of poll respondents choosing it over such worthy contenders as "I'm getting too old for this shit," and "I have a bad feeling about this," which tied with 27%. No doubt some of that had to do with the always TV quotable Jaime Weinman weighing in and agitating for a big smackdown against DISTOL?.

Well, Weinman, you got what you wanted. But oh, the price, the price -- because by messing with the forces of nature, you might have something to do with the comparitively minty-fresh score of "Well, that happened," which only annoyed 3% of poll takers.

Writers: "Well, that happened" is still viable. Insert this ironic aside into your scripts immediately via the smart, ironic, funny sidekick with all deliberate speed.

See what you did? Damn you, Weinman!

Actually, I find the concept of the clam to be endlessly fascinating on a wonk/geek writer level. It's right up there with the provenance of slang -- why some slang words and phrases remain evergreen, [see: cool] while others date horribly [vis: rad, homeboy, "let me rap with you,"], others never really break out of their regional usage [chesterfield, bollocks, wicked] and still others wind up, hilariously coming out of the mouths of U.S. presidents. [See W.'s sad romance of the awesome.]

But back to clams. It strikes me that we haven't talked about that for a while, so I'd like to throw that open to the madding crowd. What's the most egregious clam that's out there right now? Now, now -- let's stay on point here, chilluns. I'm not talking story or visual stuff here. Let's keep it strictly on the dialogue-low. Things people say in TV and films that are supposed to be jokes, but that have become so shopworn as to be utter hackery. Go to town.

BTW, I think the whole clammy clam debate really should have been cured by the internet. I remember with glee being on Charlie Jade and being in South Africa and wondering if the dialogue phrase I was putting in was too stock, too cheap. Enter Google-in-quotes, and you see the page count with that exact phrase? Instant perspective my friends. Instant perspective.